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Touring Las Vegas’ many Elvis-related locations

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Elvis Presley tours the International Hotel’s construction site on February 26, 1969 and signs a contract to perform in the showroom.
Las Vegas News Bureau / Courtesy

Elvis Presley’s footprints are all over this Valley. He began leaving them in April 1956, when he performed a two-week run of shows in the Venus Room of the now-defunct New Frontier Hotel and Casino. The property was torn down in 2007, but that doesn’t change that fact that those blue suede shoes were once planted on the northwest corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Fashion Show Drive. And while those New Frontier shows were tepidly received (Las Vegas Sun writer Bill Willard called Elvis and his band “uncouth” and “a bore”), Elvis still had a lot of Vegas ahead of him.

In the summer of 1963, Elvis came back to Vegas to shoot Viva Las Vegas, and it was on this occasion that he truly got a feel for the entire Valley. Shooting took place inside numerous casinos—some extinct (the Sands, the Frontier) and some still standing (the Tropicana, the Sahara). The pool area of the Flamingo was prominently featured in a duet between Elvis and Ann-Margaret, “The Lady Loves Me” (though the pool area has been heavily remodeled since then), and the two stars danced their way through “C’mon Everybody” in UNLV’s then-new gymnasium, which today houses the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art.

The action wasn’t strictly confined to the Strip and UNLV. One Viva sequence had Elvis and Ann-Margaret riding scooters in front of the Convention Center and water-skiing on (a nearly full) Lake Mead. The climactic race scene covers a wide swath of territory, from Hoover Dam to Red Rock Canyon to Mount Charleston. And when the two characters marry at film’s end, it’s at the Little Church of the West—arguably the very first Elvis-themed wedding in this city. (The nearly 80-year-old redwood chapel, the oldest building on the Strip, has been moved a couple of times since Viva was filmed; today, it’s at 4617 Las Vegas Blvd. S.)

A few years later, in May 1967, Elvis took his own cinematic advice and married the former Priscilla Anne Beaulieu at the Aladdin, in the suite belonging to hotel owner Milton Prell. Following the ceremony, a private banquet was held, with a menu that included one of Elvis’ favorite dishes, oysters Rockefeller. (They’re still served at classic Vegas steakhouse the Golden Steer, where Elvis dined often enough to have his own booth.) The original Aladdin was demolished in 1998 and rebuilt; by the mid-2000s it was rebranded as Planet Hollywood, which it remains to this day.

Ultimately, if you want to walk in Elvis’ footsteps today, take a right turn off the Strip onto Elvis Presley Boulevard and head for the Westgate. The former International Hotel/Las Vegas Hilton was the site of Elvis’ legendary, 636-show blockbuster residency, which took place at the property from July 1969 to December 1976. Elvis’ schedule was mind-boggling: he performed at the property twice yearly, four weeks at a time, with two shows every night and not a single day off. During performance months he’d stay on property, in a 30th-floor penthouse known today as the Tuscany Sky Villa; it has been remodeled an ;d expanded and bears scant resemblance to the room Elvis knew.

It’s worth noting that a now-defunct Strip motel, the Normandie, claimed “ELVIS SLEPT HERE” via the readerboard on its Betty Willis-designed neon sign. (While the motel is gone, the sign remains; it’s on Las Vegas Boulevard near Zappos’ Downtown headquarters.) It’s pretty much a certainty that he didn’t, however. Allegedly, he never even had the time or inclination to move into the house that the International built for its performers—2520 Castlesands Way, near Paradise Palms—to stay in during their residencies. As the man once sang, even if there were 40 more hours in a day, he wouldn’t have used them for sleeping, just for raising the stakes.

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